Are you an Instagram addict who craves a huge following but can’t seem to stretch the likes for a post beyond a few dozen? Well, the photo-sharing app’s biggest influencers (that’s online celebs to you and me) think they’ve cracked the code to amassing those hearts and getting images featured on the platform’s Explore page.
Here’s what you need to do: Geotag your posts with “Singapore, Singapore.” Now, you may be scratching your head thinking, “but, I’ve never even been to the country.” It doesn’t matter. If the likes of King Bach (11.3 million Instagram followers), Lele Pons (11.6 million followers), Dan Bilzerian (20 million followers), and Logan Paul (7.7 million followers) are doing it, then it must work, right? Well, Instagram’s verified users swear by it — according to Mic journalist Taylor Lorenz (who uncovered the trend) — but they’re not entirely sure how it works.
Some suspect it has to do with the possibility that Instagram may not have rolled out its algorithmic timeline update (which influencers initially opposed) in select Asian countries, including Singapore. By temporarily geotagging their posts there, they believe they can jump to the top of users’ feeds more easily. There’s just one tiny flaw with that argument: Instagram actually released its algorithm-based timeline in Singapore in April.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, people are just plain confounded by the trend.
Why everybody got Singapore,Singapore as their location on Instagram ??did I misss something ?
— KD (@elitelife_kd) December 12, 2016
Confused as to why everyone's geotagging "Singapore,Singapore" on Instagram
— nina (@HouseOfBizzle) December 1, 2016
“You keep Singapore up for 12 hours, then you change it,” an Instagram user with a sizable following told Lorenz. “It’s fully ridiculous and dumb, but it works. I’m not sure why or if it’s just because it’s become a meme, but the ‘Singapore, Singapore’ posts do way better. It 100 percent works.”
A quick search for posts tagged with “Singapore, Singapore” reveals the temporal aspect of the trend could indeed be true, with very few popular users appearing in the results with posts that were clearly not taken in the country. However, screenshots shared online reveal they have in fact used the tag. We reached out to Instagram for a comment, but the company did not immediately respond.
You can always try out the supposed loophole for yourself, at the expense of looking a bit foolish in front of your pals. But does that really matter when the ultimate goal is online popularity? After all, who needs friends when you’ve got followers.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?